A private collection of material focusing on the never ending joys of the Trimet industrial complex
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Dispatch/Control clips represent approximately 5% of all calls chosen at random

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Friday, April 4, 2014

TRIMET AND ETHICS-PART 1

ABUSE OF PUBLIC RECORDSIve been accused by more than a few Trimet apologists as being 'overly negative', never been able to see anything good at Trimet.It's pretty hard to see the good when you are the victim of a class of liars and thieves who have been lying and stealing from everyone for years and years now.We have a 'gang' of management at Trimet that has over and over proven themselves unable to show any sort of ethical behavior at their positions.Whether its contracting with 'con men' (WES), entering into stupid speculative futures contracts, hiding raises for themselves in phony contingency budgets, or trying to prevent the public from getting information, every single action by these people is suspect for motivation.

All of a sudden we are supposed to believe that they have changed? What world do you live in?

Over many months, Rose requested records pertaining to a
runaway MAX train, and bus and rail operator work schedules. He met
roadblocks by the transit agency, which argued the documents did not
exist as he'd requested them—that they would need to be created and thus
were not public documents available for the asking. So Rose and his
editors capitulated and asked for the data as TriMet kept it. And
TriMet's reply was another roadblock: to convert its data into PDF
files, forcing a laborious process by Rose and his associates of
"cut-and-paste" searching across some 8,000 pages. Oh, and The Oregonian would ultimately pay $500 for the privilege, pushing its total TriMet tab for records to about $2,400.Significantly, the release of information pertaining to the runaway
train required the intervention of the Multnomah County District
Attorney's Office. Despite TriMet's initial confusing reports about
whether a Yellow Line MAX train had even crashed—it did, into an
abutment, with two passengers on board and withstanding $60,000 in
damage owing to a sleeping driver—TriMet was forced to abandon its
position of cloaking the event as a personnel matter under
investigation. Then-District Attorney Michael Schrunk decided the public had a right to know about it, ordering compliance with The Oregonian's request, and noted in his May 3, 2012 report: "This was an extraordinary event with seemingly very little investigation."

Oregon public records law makes noises about transparency. But with
loopholes allowing for "cost recovery" for complicated requests, the
rules give agencies an easy and legal way to hold things back by making
things more complicated than needed and, thus, too expensive for smaller
operations and actual citizens to obtain.
It's good the daily in town still has the money to chase this kind of
document dump and pay a lawyer for a court fight, if it came to that.
We've had to do it before, too. But not everyone can, and don't think
public officials in this state aren't well aware of that advantage